ICT is no magic, especially around the topic of farmer-to-farmer knowledge sharing  documentation & dissemination of farmer innovations. ICT can only amplify existing support intiatives aimed to these activities. It is unrealistic expecting more than this function from ICTs. 

It is also complex topic e.g. what are the differences between a best practice, a local innovation and indigenous technical knowldge (ITK)?  

Most commonly, real innovations for smallholders  result from the combination of scientific knowldge and ITK. These are complex exercises, e.g. Participatory Technology Development  (PTD)requiring highly skilled facilitation and face-to-face interactions. ICT does not play much of a role here. 

Therefore, I limit myself to a couple of concrete exemplary cases (there are others that could be mentioned).

Apart from the ever mentioned Digital Green! for the documentation and dissemination of best practices at farmer level, other examples of use of ICT for knowledge sharing of farmer innovations in combination with support processes are: 

Farmer-to-Farmer knowledge sharing (mobile platform): the case of CafeDirect Producer Foundation (CPF): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPzfxuqB6ok&feature=plcp

Documentation and dissemination of farmer innovation (mainly process): the case of Prolinnova  http://www.prolinnova.net/

Documentation of best practices at farmer level (e-portal): the case of ICAAP

www.advanceagriculturalpractice.in

These cases deserve further analysis, but they can be useful to further the discussion.

Paolo

 

 

In India I am involved in supporting two different digital paltforms using two different approaches. The aim is to delve in practice into the "CIAS" as key succcess factors for the integration and impact oriented use of ICT in Agricultural service delivery and agro advosory:  

1. mKisan - is part the mAgri initiative: http://bit.ly/KfHmL4  We look at issues of dissemantion of information without intermediaries to focus on scale and content quality management. The medium is voice with restricted use of SMS linked to Voice messages. With CABI we look at creating a call centre also without intermediaries, capable of linking directly farmers with experts. We look also at use videos for non-smart phones devices.
2. Digital Green already introduced in this forum by Ritu, is proposing a video-enabled extension approach wich aims at increasing adoption rate after video screeneing through the deployment and facilitation of community based service providers. With Digital Green in the frame of a MEAS study we are looking at all the issues of instituionalsation of intermediaries within the partner organisation, content management and scaling- up with quality.

The use of intermediaries is critical to facilitate any behavoural change, as asked by Roxy, or simply facilitating farmer-expert knowledge sharing . At the same time, their long term existence remain critical, without motivation and cost recovery mecahnisms, as more articultated alreasy by Steph and others.

Quality content provision to ICT platform remain a huge and understimated cost challenge. Without relevant content , that can be continously updated and validated, the great opportunities offered by ICT in lowering access barrier to agrcultural information access will be lost.    

  

 

Hello to everybody and many thanks to GSMA and to FAO/e-Agriculture for organising and hosting this forum.

I would like to share my perspective based on my current Indian experience, looking at the potential for ICT mainstremaing in Agriculture  and reach the largest possible number of smallholders.
I percieve the critical challenge for achieving impact by any ICT platform, especially mobile as  one of most promising technologies, as  the result of the triangular tension between the 3 key success factors: a) scale in terms of farmer reached b) content quality c) use of the information by farmers. This tension is well expressed already the various comments on partnerships and scale made by the forum participants. I see lots of trade offs between these ingredients rather than a set of different recipes.
A concrete example based on this framework can be made by using the IKSL as a prominent case represented in this forum.
IKSL has shown the great scale of farmer reach (more than 1 million farmers) through an MNO approach and with plenty of business sense for a major mobile operator of the caliber of Airtel. Yet, evidence of actual benefits and use by farmer of the IKSL service is hard to prove at this scale, mainly because of the large fluctuation of the subscriber base to the service.
On the other hand, decreasing fluctuation by increasing content quality as palusible remedy, is in tension with the difficulty of deliverying quality content to such a scale and in variety of agro- ecological zones and socio- cultural settings (capacity problem).
In my opinion an important factor of the IKSL scale success is linked to the partnership with IFFCO, a  40 year old co-operative with capillary structure in the majority of all Indian states. This structure has been a powerfull marketing  outlet for the Airtel Green SIM cards, supporting the IKSL mobile information channels. In short IFFCO, as MNO partner, is a special case that has  forged a special  type partnership with an MNO of difficult replication.   By contrast, IKSL working on a much smaller scale and by associating with NGOs development programmes, has shown potential of increasing its impact and relevance at farmer level (e.g. the goat project case). Yet, this has follwed a different delivery model. This included complementing the m- service with face-to-face contacts, need based delivery of info, mobile access to women, and presence of complementary services (accees to loans and SHG mobilisation services).
This success is limited to the area of intervention of the specific NGO and again in negative tension with scale. To what extent this  partnership approach will be econmically viable and attractive for MNOs outside ad-hoc pilots, has yet to be seen. In fact, it is plausible to think that investements, to link with different agricultural programmes and repurpose IKSL content and platform to suit the specific context needs, may be too high.

To sum up, on the basis  of the IKSL experience, I see in future a great potential for the use of mobile to deliver advisory services at a scale to farmers. Yet, any similar approach from both private sector and public sector  aimed at mainstremaing m-services in agriculture will have to find acceptable trades off with the other two remaning factors of the framework.